The dream shaper had just been recovered from his home in El Paso, with the apparitions following close behind.

The armed members of the recovery squad stood outside window of the scip's temporary containment chamber contemplating what to do next. The apparitions were lurking in and out of crevices and blind passages of the abandoned building's basement, screaming for the shaper. The monsters had just recently cut the lights, and now the squad was holed up and their rifles were aimed nervously over a flare in the doorway.

The squad arrived to find an empty studio apartment, recently vacated. The only clues left behind were a broken needle and a journal filled with indecipherable images, black and white spheres, and nonsense words.

Outside of the window they could see a man, the probable scip, running toward an overpass reaching over a very busy four lane highway. The figure made his way toward the ledge, pausing and looking straight ahead for a few moments. One of the squad members looked on through the window, motioning for half of the squad to follow, leaving two of their men behind in the apartment with the researchers.

The attempt to intercept the suicide diver had not been a success for the recovery squad. The scip standing over the ledge began his nosedive toward the pavement before they got close. The falling body was interrupted by the grille of a lucky sixteen wheeler before hitting the pavement, and bounced back against the curb like a beef watermelon.

“Moattilliatta?” voices in the hallway crackled repeatedly.

Only creeping silence and the recovery squad’s breathing could be heard for the next few minutes.

“Hope they get here soon.”

“You’re tellin’ me.”

From the makeshift containment cell came a quick flash of purple light, when the squad turned they could see that the scip’s corpse had been replaced with a very much alive man, identical to the one they saw jump off the bridge earlier.

“I guess we’re getting that bonus?” One of the others asked nervously.

The man in the cell slowly walked into a corner, and curled up into a fetal position.

More slithering and clanking could be heard outside in the hallways. “The last teraquetzal returns to the ‘ESP’.” The cricketing voices were numerous and demanding.

“What the hell are those things on about?”

The rest of the squad turned their sights back on the doorway where the sound of clanking and slithering could be heard increasing in volume. Something like a giant ant’s face quickly flashed in and out of the doorway, barely avoiding a startled hail of bullets.

“The fuck!”

“They’re s-s-scared of bullets man…”

The leader half-laughed, half-grimaced, “Backup should be here any minute, just keep fixed on that door, keep your shit together.”

Agent Breen flipped through the old weathered journal while Sanders collected samples from the needle and the carpet.

“Irradi Exerptas.” Breen said, holding the book in front of him.

“What?”

“That’s what’s written on the front. Some of this is written in Spanish. What’s in the needle?”

“Morphine. He was trying to OD. Really should have killed him. Makes you wonder why he didn’t just try the whole bridge diving thing to start.” Sanders wipes her nose. “Anything else in there?”

“Most of the words are like a made up language, and there’s a bunch of hand drawn pictures of creatures, bug people, lots of random shit. Guy was an artist, crazy from the looks of it. Last page is another nonsense word… ‘Phyxia ‘ in large print.”

“Any word back from the others who went after the scip?”

“Not our problem really. After you’re done with the samples it’s back to base for us.”

“Right. Yeah I’m done here.”

“Extraction point is on the roof. We should be looking for a police helicopter.” Breen says as he follows Sanders out of the room.

The scip in the cell began screaming as the noises in the hallway grew louder.

“Make it stop just fucking make it stop why the fuck FUCK.” He grasped the top of his head and curled tighter in the corner.

“Any idea what we should be expecting here buddy?” One of the uniformed men barked to the scip.

“They’re pissed!” The scip shrieks. “You’re not letting them to me, you’re pissing them off! Can't help it! All fucked!”

Some members of the squad made quick glances to the leader.

“Well that is unfortunate…” The leader remarked. “Are these your friends?”

Everything goes silent again, with only the noise of the man in the cell crying. In a few moments the ants and spiders and witches would begin marching in.

“Now I’m lost…”

“Hmm?”

“This guy… must of had a shitload of free time. These drawings are very detailed, lifelike.”

“I don’t know, some people can do that with their eyes closed. Maybe he’s one of them.”

“Either way, this one book would have taken years to fill. Had to be obsessed.”

“Really? How many pages are there?” Sanders asks, reaching for the journal as they make their way up the final steps of the stairs. He continues flipping through the book as they open the door to the roof.

Just then a voice buzzed into their ears. Hold for extraction. Transportation is being rerouted for assistance at Proxy-2. No ETA. Keep your heads low. Avoid civilian contact. Mount your wisdom teeth. You know the routine.

“Well, looks like we’ll be waiting here for a while.” Breen reached into his pocket and produced a small, white, shiny object and placed it into his mouth, wincing.

“You can only have so many helicopters I guess.” Sanders says, eagerly flipping through the pages of the artifact.

“All gods must die…” A haggish, many elbowed arthropod croaked in the general direction of the recovery team as it lurched toward them.

“Stop or we will shoot!”

The creature continued its hobbling, pained march, its two mouths dripping gray fluid.

“The cycle is nearly at its end, the Tremulant will prevail.”

The thing got too close for comfort. The squad opened fire, and its carapace was finally breached from the hail, the thing falling to the ground in a pool of chitin and pink blood. The mess quickly evaporated as if it had never been there.

“The hell…”

Soon other creatures flooded into the doorway. Each stood roughly the height of an adult man, with three sets of compound eyes set on a gray, ant-like face, three sets of legs, and three sets of arms. They each had a symbol of a black and white sphere merging into one another carved in their exoskeletons. Squeezing in through the back of the forward group were dumb looking eight legged things with long spears mounted on their flanks.

“Phyxia!” The ant-like men screamed in clicks as they charged into the room single file, their hook-ended halberds pointed out in front of them.

The squad opened fire, dropping the creatures almost as soon as they appeared. Thirty or more of the creatures must have fallen in noxious gray mist and nothingness before they stopped filing in.

The squad was now running low on ammo, and more of the things could still be heard outside continuing their chant.

“Hey, buddy, care to tell us what the fuck is going on here?” The squad leader asked the scip.

“It’s pointless here…” he cried. “… they need me there, they kill me or send me to sleep. They’re trying to kill me for good, they can’t do it here, I need to go back to sleep…”

“So these things pop up when you’re ‘dead’ or sleeping?”

The man sits up in the corner of his cell. “I can't satisfy them, it's impossible. Their world is like hell and they blame me for it. I told them I didn't know it would happen!”

“Okay so if you die die, they die die, and they’re trying to pull this maneuver off when you’re in your magic little sleep world while you’re there.”

“They cut me up inside, do experiments, try to change me inside. Their nations fight wars over it. It is useless.”

“So eventually the last of this batch will disappear if we keep shooting.”

"Until I go to sleep again. They come sometimes when I’m awake but rarely are there even two or three.”

“Right” the leader said, reloading his last clip into his gun. “So we just make this one count, and after…”

With that the lights to the facility came back on, followed by the sounds of insect hissing, and gunfire.

Object has been secured. Await extraction.

Sanders was chewing on some gum and flipping through the pages of the book.

"Don't you know it's dangerous to be chewing with that thing in your mouth?" said Breen, more annoyed than concerned.

"I found some lines in English here." replied Sanders.

In the distance the flutter of a helicopter could be heard.

"Well damn that was quick."

Sanders paused for a minute, watching the helicopter making its way toward them. "It's a paragraph or two. Guy seems distressed about whatever it is he does."

"What is it that he does?"

Okay they're not lucid dreams. I'm going fucking insane or… maybe they are just dreams? I know people that can feel dreams. I can feel them pulling my insides out, tasting them and storing them. Interrogating me all the while in a language I shouldn't understand but I do.

It seems trite but did I imagine these things? I had to. I had to imagine them first. I drew them and then I saw them when I went to sleep. That's normal. How do I explain this to any of my friends? "Bro, I'm tortured by spider people in my sleep, I wake up on the other side of the house sleeping on my head with my body vertical against a wall, and then I hear a knock on the door from the landlord telling me to stop holding such massive parties."

I can't keep this up. I just want them to leave me alone. I can't give them the answers they want. I imagine better things for them and they turn them into weapons and torture devices for me.

I don't know what to do. I've tried imagining them away, thinking and drawing up doomsday devices for their world but, ha, they need to activate them. They intercept them in the ESP. They call me their god-terrorist. They want their world to end, I just make it progressively worse. They do the same to me. They all want to die and they can't kill me.

I can hear them chanting in the back of my mind while I'm awake sometimes. They're waiting for me to go to sleep so they can commit to their experiments, so they can examine me and find out how to 'save' themselves.